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Raiding Strategy
Topic Started: Jun 3 2008, 21:40 (78 Views)
Xlixeryn

So you all are better informed, and perhaps i can even learn from many of you i've decided to post my raiding strategy. Feel free to pick it apart and add some of your own tips :)




Well sure lemee give ya some tips. First get your cities with decent sized hideouts. At least 6 or more. Better chances with less money loss on retries. Plus it makes it harder for peeps to spy on you.

Then build some shitty armies! like 25 slingers, 10 sword, 5 phalanx at least for raiding. That'll do 5 cities to get ya started

Target towns that are greyed out and have an " i " next to them. Those are inactives and most of the time they dont come back to the game. You feel guilty doing it until the resources start pouring in ;) I usually send spies to greyed out towns of about 7 population or more. And stay away from other allied towns if possible. I do some if the alliance isnt too big

Then send 2 spies to each town. Its a low cost and you can always withdraw the other if you succeed. Before you perform any missions look at the trading docks. If its 4 or more, sometimes 3 if im feeling greedy you'll know you'll pull a good hull from it. Then perform the spy garrison mission. Sometimes you lose a spy, no biggie :) If its less then 3 i withdraw my spies since it wont be worth the loot. Retreating spies is free, so no loss to you

Risk of Discovery. When your spy arrives dont perform any missions right away, wait for the spy to blend into the town and lower your spy's risk of detection percent to tick down to 5%. That;ll give you the best possible results before doing anything. Whether its withdrawing or performing a mission

If there is a few boats in the harbor launch a fleet to destroy it, then once the naval battle is over and they are still inactive then you can launch troops. Obviously your troops will turn around if there is boats in the harbor.

When your troops get there the battle will be over if there is no troops. IMPORTANT make sure you have some free trade ships in your harbor. At the time of the attack your boats will leave automatically and pickup the resources you pillage + the 1 ship you used to launch your troops. Your troops come back with all your trade ships and resources. They can only take as much as they can load in 20 minutes and leave. After 20 minutes and your troops are on their way back you can pillage em again. Called Speed Raiding. I dont do it, but its an option. I usually hit some good towns often, but once a day sorta thing.
Edited by Xlixeryn, Jun 4 2008, 16:52.
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melocopter

Good info, thanks.
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Xlixeryn

at this current time, the most recent patch really screwed up Spying on people just FYI.

They are having problems with retraining spies, spies stuck in limbo and when sending a spy it sends multiple spies that you didnt want to send. There are lots of posts on the issue on the boards.

A quick fix for retraining however. If you have an empty slot, send a spy. On the way to his destination thats the only time you can train another one
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pbspartin

Ok so here was my theory that I tested today on about a dozen raids.

Thesis: Is it better to use a bunch of junk soldiers or a just a couple of better ones.

Here are my findings so far.

1. You can get more attack and defense per dollar when you use higher quality troops. Basically it means that if I spent 200 gold supporting slingers or swordsman, and 200 gold supporting archers. I would have more slingers/swordman units but the 3 archers would have more attack and defense.

2. It does not matter if you send 50 men or 5 men. You still get the same amount of loot. The looting as far as I can tell is only based on the size of the port. Bigger ports means more loot.

3. Every so often you will lose week units like slingers and swordsman even if there is no defending army. This is especially true it the city has town walls. I attacked a city with level 4 town walls and no army defending it. I lost 3 out of 4 swordsman. So I attacked again with 4 phalanx units which are stronger units. I did not lose any men and I got roughly the same amount of loot as with the swordsman.

4. If you have any cities for looting that are within a 1 hr travel radias then if it only has a Level 2 Port then it can still be very lucrative. Generally you will get 1-2 ships worth of resources and you will get 3k-4k in gold from these cities. The benefit is that most people leave these cities alone due to the small ports. So generally they have more resources for plundering than cities with larger ports that are getting cleaned out more often. It only will cost you 400 gold max with the cost of unit upkeep and spying but you get on average 3000 gold in return every hour because these cities are so close to you. Plus the bonus 500 resources.

Here are my recommendations that will help you increase looting efficiency based on these findings: (these are based on looting cities with no armies defending them)

1. Use 2-3 swordsman on cities with no town walls
2. Use 3-4 phalanx or archers on cities with town walls to avoid having to replenish troops. Personally I don't like have to waste time building more junk units when I can just send a few good ones to get the job done. It also will give you the upper hand just in case they build a few units before your raiding party arrives you will be able to beat them no problems.
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pbspartin

One more tip also would be to follow the strategy as outlined by Xlixeryn. I would strongly recommend that you not get too greedy and plunder the same few cities several times a day. If you do then you will exhaust them and not be able to get anything out of them. Plunder a variety of cities only once or twice a day and it will be more profitable to you in the long run : )
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Xlixeryn

i found a neat little post on some forum that will really help me lower my raiding costs for more efficiency on town targets with 0 troops. I suppose sending 7 troops or so is still a good option... but if you want to break it down to mathematics... here ya go

To determine the minimum troop type to send, you have to take his town wall level and multiply by 3 to get the total damage that wall will deal. Then send a single troop with sufficient defence value to withstand that damage. For example, a wall level 1 I send a single slinger. For a wall level 2 to 4 I send a single swordsman. For a wall level 5 to 12 I send either a phalanx or an archer. And so on. If there's no wall at all, send a swordsman, because the Town Hall does around 10 points of damage, which will kill a slinger.
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pbspartin

So to further build on this raiding strategy I thought I might help you all out. Here is my current list of raiding targets. It is a bit smaller because I have not beefed it up for a 2 weeks now but it is still sizable. I have attached my excel spread sheet and it is pretty self explanitory.
The raiding party required is only one of the specified soldiers. One caution would be that my units are fully upgraded so some of the cities I send swordsman to you might need a stronger unit. These are all inactives with a few exceptions that might have hope back in the game. If they are active again just skip em.
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Attachments: Ikariam_Raiding_List.xls (22 KB)
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